


Chapter X: The Moments Between

by deathrae



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Drabble Collection, Gen, I like my Suffering Boys (TM) apparently I'm sorry, Missing Scene, SO, Tags Added As I Go, Violence, also self-harm, and I dunno why?, bear traps are brutal, chapter 2 is MAJOR EPISODE PROMPTO SPOILERS, if that is not your jam do not read chapter 2, somehow this fic turned into a series of one-offs about the boys in physical and emotional agony?, tags remain applicable as I add Episode Ignis spoilers, whoops
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-11 10:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8976226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathrae/pseuds/deathrae
Summary: Some missing scenes and idle thoughts about the FFXV boys. Tags and spoiler warnings will be added as I go!





	1. Sidequest: Mind the Trap

“‘We’ll find the old animal traps for you,’ I said,” Noctis muttered. He cautiously manipulated the rusted old device with his fingers, disengaging the mechanisms and nervously yanking his hands away whenever the gears gave a dangerous creak. “‘It’ll be a piece of cake,’ I said.” The mechanisms ground against each other, rust flaking off in huge pieces, and then it disengaged and fell open, useless and harmless as a de-fanged wolf. He sighed heavily in relief and stood up, dusting off his knees.

“The hunter said there were five in this area, right?” Gladiolus asked. Gladio had been vitally useful in this whole absurd endeavor, but even he was operating more on theoretical knowledge with hunting traps and how to hide them, not personal experience.

Noctis nodded, turning so that his flashlight lit up Gladio’s midsection. “Yeah. That was the fourth.”

Prompto groaned, barely keeping his voice from being a whine. “There’s another one? We’ve been out here for _hours!_ ”

Noctis kept his mouth shut, but agreed. They’d been searching since the early afternoon, and it was now well past 7. The sun had gone down a little while ago, and now it was getting to be properly dark.

“We should head back,” Gladio said, his voice a steady rumble that betrayed none of the anxiety Noctis knew was nagging at the back of the older man’s mind. “The daemons will be coming out soon.” They’d already fended off a small pod of Hundlegs. Noctis _really_ wasn’t interested in spending his night fighting anything else.

Ignis idly pressed his glasses up on his nose. “Besides which, searching for the last trap in this darkness is frankly asking for trouble.”

“Mm,” Noctis said, in agreement. He hadn’t even considered that—he was too focused on the prospect of curling up in bed and burying his face in a pillow for at least 8 hours. “Yeah, you’re right. We’ll come back tomorrow for the last one.”

The others obeyed with a scattering of low approving grunts and quiet nods, and as a group they all turned back toward the rest stop they’d left the Regalia near. They headed out of the brush with a cacophony of crunching brush and sticks.

They hadn’t gotten halfway to the dirt path when Noctis heard a sound that made his blood run cold. A crunch of impact, the slow grinding of rusted gears, and then a stomach-turning _krr-crunch_.

In a handful of moments he took account of the data he had access to. He wasn’t in pain. It wasn’t him. If it were Gladio, he would’ve heard a low, pained grunt. If it were Prompto—well, the poor kid would’ve _screamed_.

“Ignis,” he breathed. Noctis turned on his heel, pressing fingers next to his flashlight to angle it up at his friend’s face.

Ignis’ tanned skin had gone ashen, but otherwise, he seemed almost normal. Almost. Noctis knew him too well—Ignis’ eyes were just slightly too wide. There was a slight twitch to the corner of his mouth. Ignis was all control, always, and he was keeping hold of himself now by raw, sheer force of will.

“Iggy?” Gladio said softly. Any sudden sound threatened to disturb Ignis’ steady expression, and Gladio knew as well as Noctis did that if _Ignis_ lost his cool the rest of them would inevitably follow.

Ignis exhaled sharply, like he was trying to breathe out pain instead of air. “Gladio,” he said. His voice trembled, thin. “I... require your assistance.”

“You bet,” Gladio said, as if they were not discussing a couple hundred pounds of pressure and toothed steel jaws currently tethering their friend to the ground. Ignis’ shoulders were shaking as Gladio crossed the space between them.

Prompto was breathing very fast and very hard, and had backed up to stand beside Noctis. They were useless in this, and they both knew it.

“Prompto,” Gladio said, quiet but gruff with a need for haste. “Turn away. Noctis, I’m gonna need your light.”

Prompto took a very slow, shaky breath, but then Noctis heard the crunching of leaves and saw Prompto’s cone of light swing away. Noctis stepped forward a bit, and very reluctantly angled his light downward. Blood was already soaking into Ignis’ pant leg. The fabric was ruined, easily, but it looked as though the old, rusted trap hadn’t closed as tight or as hard as it had been intended to. If they were lucky, Ignis’ bone was intact.

Gladio took hold of the levers, easing them open to disengage them. Ignis did nothing but hiss in pain, but even that sound was like a knife in Noctis’ chest. Without thinking he reached out, keeping the light focused so Gladio could work. Ignis didn’t move at first, then extended a hand, gingerly, like even that tiny movement pained him, and wrapped his hand around Noctis’. He squeezed, _hard_ , as Gladio carefully worked the trap open, so hard Noctis’ knuckles creaked.

“Out,” Gladio said, straining. Noctis stepped forward, pulling Ignis’ leg up and free, and then Gladio yanked his hands away, letting the trap snap back shut with a horrible _CLANK_.

Ignis hissed out a breath, leaning on Noctis.

“Roles reversed,” Noctis muttered.

Ignis made a faint noise of confusion, letting his body rest against Noctis’ shoulders and back. “What’s that, Noct?”

“Your prince gets to support _you_ for once,” Noctis said, and Ignis gave a sharp, pained snort of laughter.

“I suppose you’re right,” he said. He rested the toe of his injured foot on the ground, then hissed and lifted it slightly again. “I assure you, I won’t make a habit of it.”

“See that you don’t,” Noctis said, with feigned distaste. Gladio moved forward and poured a potion on the open wound, earning another low hiss, and this time a faint groan.

“Sorry Iggy, these pants are toast,” Gladio said. “We’ll clean it up right when we get back, but this’ll at least get you solid enough that we can get to the caravan.”

“Right,” Ignis said. His voice was still a bit tight and thin with effort, but he sounded slightly more like himself. “That’s fine, Gladio, thank you.”

“Can you ride your chocobo?” Noctis asked.

“I think so,” Ignis said, gingerly putting weight on his foot before standing more steadily. “Yes,” he amended. Noctis reached for the whistle in his pocket.

“Speak up if you’re not okay.”

“Right,” Ignis said.

“I _mean_ it,” Noctis chided, and Ignis huffed a faint laugh through his nose.

“Very well, your highness.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was briefly very worried I needed to be concerned about stepping on the "old animal traps." So it was a relief when I stepped on one and didn't trigger it, but then I started thinking...


	2. Episode Prompto: It Hurts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SPOILERS FOR EPISODE PROMPTO ABOUND. -waves my arms around- GO BACK BEFORE IT'S TOO LAAAAATE

Some part of him knows that the smoldering, burning stick won’t be enough.

Part of him knows, and doesn’t care.

It hurts to see the ink on his skin. To know what it means, after years of not quite being sure, years of caution from his parents that maybe other kids won’t understand, maybe other kids won’t know what it means. Years of knowing that it was bad enough to be teased for being fat, it would be worse being teased for being the kid who has a nonsensical tattoo that he’s had since before he could remember.

It hurts to see the barcode and know it means he is one of thousands. Copies upon copies. An assembly line reproduction of a painting that isn’t even any good.

There are, Prompto thinks then, dizzying and fervent in its sudden clarity, two kinds of people in the world. People who would have shitty clones, and want them, or people who would have okay clones, but would never dream of it.

There _are_ people who could have non-shitty clones, he’s pretty sure. Clones of Ignis might be a little, well, intense, and maybe a little stressful to have around, but they wouldn’t be monsters.

Is _that_ what he is?

Does being made of the genetic programming of a monster make you one too?

He can almost imagine Ignis’ voice.

_Nature and nurture **together** maketh man, Prompto._

Noctis’ voice comes next.

_Okay, fine, so you’re the son of someone who had a lot of power and let it make him kind of a dick. Join the club._

It hurts to dream that maybe they’d be cool with it. Maybe they will. But probably they won’t.

It hurts.

He bites his lip and screws up his face and jams the burning wood to his skin and god it hurts, it hurts _so much_ , but this pain is _his_ pain, it’s pain he _chose_. It’s pain he can own and call his and say _I did this to myself_ instead of pain thrust on him by someone else. All his life he’s been _given_ things. Given duties, given responsibilities he’s not ready for. Given pain, given mockery, given judgement. Given a past he didn’t ask for and truths about himself he never wanted.

It hurts until he can’t stand it anymore and he drops the stick.

It clatters to the ground and with tears streaming down his face at the lingering agony of it he examines his arm, turning his hand just a little so he can see it. His skin is mangled almost beyond recognition, furiously red and pink and just a little black at the center where the heat was most intense and just barely started to burn him for real. The skin around it is bubbling and radiating warmth and he doesn’t dare touch it.

But the barcode remains, the lines of decades-old black ink rippled and distorted where his skin is most damaged, but still visible, still real.

Prompto has never known a pain that didn’t bring laughter. Jeering on the schoolyard inspires snickering. Embarrassing moments of failure inspires uncomfortable chuckling. When you’re a child and someone is laughing at you the only option you have is to join in, to pretend to own it, to make it yours so that the laughing will stop.

It’s not fun when the object of your mockery laughs too. It’s not fun when the fat kid you’re laughing at makes it so you’re laughing _with_ him. So he learned to laugh, even when it hurt, even when it was a lie, even when the last thing he felt was  _mirth_ or  _joy._

He’s never been able to ditch the habit.

Helpless, horrible giggles bubble up in his chest like a grade-school baking soda volcano and it hurts, it’s caustic and sharp in his throat but he can’t help it, he just sits there, laughing because if he stops laughing he’ll start crying in earnest, and he doesn’t want to hear that sound, doesn’t want to hear his own ragged sobs echoing off the cave walls, so he’ll take the laughter, he’ll accept the painful chuckling if it means he can keep himself floating for another few seconds.

“Branded for life,” he whispers, when he sucks in a breath.


	3. Episode Ignis: Sacrifice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SPOILERS FOR EPISODE IGNIS' PRIMARY STORYLINE.

What no one told him about the Ring of the Lucii is how heavy it is.

Well, no, that isn’t quite true. King Regis spoke often of the physical presence of the crown. The burden of responsibility. The weight of the ring upon the king’s right hand. But Ignis had always assumed that was an emotional thing. Heavy is the head that wears the crown and all that. The maintenance of the wall was clearly a very real, very taxing task. The ring was heavy in that sense, then, he presumed.

He had never imagined that the steel piece of jewelry, with its intricate designwork and its etched patterns, would feel so _solid_ , so _heavy_.

But when he lifted it—to show Ardyn what he had in his possession—and stared the chancellor in the eye and pronounced his defiance, it may as well have been made entirely of concrete.

“I swore an oath to stand with Noct and keep him safe,” he said, meaning it with every fiber of his being. “Whatever it takes, I _will_ protect him!”

If the ring was heavy when he held it, when he _wore_ it, it became unbearable.

The physical weight of it on his left hand was bad enough, but he felt the phantom blue power of the ancient kings ripple up his arm.

Ignis has never been as strong as Gladio, but no one would ever call him weak.

But in that moment, overwhelmed by the judgement of the Kings of Lucis, he _screamed_.

“Ahh-ah-ahh,” Ardyn purred, as only a man of his nature can, and Ignis couldn’t stop screaming. The pain was unimaginable. He couldn’t find the edges of it to grasp hold of it and master it under his will—it just kept expanding when he tried. It wracked through him, turning his bones to molten lead and his blood to acid and his skin to paper. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

“I may not be of royal blood,” Ignis wheezed, and it hurt, it _hurt_ to speak, his throat was burning but he forced the words out even as each one grated against his lips like sandpaper, “But if a _Glaive_ can harness its power, _so can I!”_

Ardyn, for once, said nothing. He just watched, skeptical, but intrigued. As if he had seen something he did not expect.

“Kings of Lucis!” Ignis bellowed, raising his face to the heavens. “ _Lend me your strength!”_

Time, as he knew it, slowed to a crawl, and the pain slackened, lingering in the background like a prowling wolf, but eased, just for a moment. Only a ghost of it remained, reminding him that it was there, pulling at his joints. Ardyn and his eerie, broken face retreated, as did the raging sea. He looked around, scanning. The sea was still _there_ , and he could hear it, more or less, but there was little he could see beyond the altar’s stones and ruined arches. The beauty of Altissian architecture, laid to waste.

**_You call upon the wards of this world’s future._ **

Ignis spun, and a ghostly blue figure burst into view like a flame, ethereal and transient. It flickered as he watched it, and then two more lit like candles on either side, then two more, then two more. He stopped trying to count. He fell to one knee and lowered his head.

**_If you come lusting for our power,_** continued the ancient King. By the enormous axe he bore, it had to be The Conqueror King, though his face was masked by armor and unreadable. **_You must first stand in our judgement._**

“I submit myself to your ruling,” Ignis said, lifting his face.

Another King spoke now, an enormous tower of a man who could only be the Tall King, his voice like the yawning of a sleeping mountain, **_Yours is not even royal blood._**

A third, shrouded in cloaks and bearing twin swords—the Wanderer King then—shifted. It was an almost fitful gesture, maybe just the flicker of light, but then again, maybe it was an actual gesture from a long-dead man.

**_Would we turn aside an honest plea from such a faithful retainer of the True King?_ **

There was an achingly long silence that followed, full of a tension Ignis did not think was meant for his ears. He wondered if the Kings had discussed it when they had bartered with the Glaive that had deigned to wear the ring. Had they conversed where he could hear them?

Had they _bantered_ while Ravus burned?

Ignis hoped, but said nothing. He would not so insult the Kings as to interrupt them.

Another King bearing a heavy-headed mace—the Fierce King—pounded his fist into his breastplate with a hollow, ghostly _clang_. **_Speak, child of Lucis. Present thy case._**

Ignis blinked and raised his head higher, looking around the circle of monarchs before him. “I?” He pushed himself back to his feet with a grunt of effort. The words he had heard echoing in his skull when Pryna had... had _connected_ with him, maybe, came rattling around again. “The... The Usurper.”

Several of the monarchs shifted, but there was no sound to it, no intake of breath, no hissed curses, just the eerie, restless motion of a swarm about to strike.

“The Usurper seeks to kill the True King when he has hardly begun. The Oracle...” Ignis felt his breath catch in his chest and for a moment the pain stole his breath. “The Oracle is dead. He can still succeed. Noctis _is_ the Chosen King. But I cannot defend him from the Usurper as I am. Please,” he said, and turned, speaking to them all at once. “Please, Kings of Lucis. I cannot do this alone.”

For a terrifyingly long moment, the Ancient Kings said nothing at all, and he thought that he had failed. But then the Conqueror spoke.

**_Our boon is not cheap, warrior._ **

“Whatever the price,” Ignis said, almost before the King had finished speaking. “I will pay it.”

There was a soft sound, almost a laugh, and Ignis turned again, pausing. That voice was almost... familiar.

**_To take away the Chosen King’s retainer so near the end of his journey. Surely there is another way._ **

“King Regis,” Ignis whispered, and for a moment, so fast he almost imagined it, the thirteenth King dipped his head.

A King in almost unrecognizable armor—an ancient, forgotten art of the smiths of Tenebrae, he thought, which surely made this the Warrior King—spoke next, and sounded thoughtful.

**_Sometimes it is a greater loss to live with cost, than to die._ **

“Anything,” Ignis insisted.

**_Then it is decided,_** the Conqueror intoned, his voice ringing with the unquestionable authority and power of a gong. **_You will live, but without that which you most treasure._**

A frisson of fear ran down his spine, but Ignis firmed his will and stood tall.

“Take it then,” he called.

**_We grant to you our right,_** the Conqueror noted. **_But only until such time as the Usurper is waylaid._**

“That is enough,” Ignis said, and ducked his head. “Thank you.”

King Regis nodded to him, as the other flickering Kings began to vanish, one by one, extinguishing like the flames of a lantern in the night. Regis remained the longest, but then they were gone.

The pain came roaring back with all the strength of a typhoon, and the sensation of ancient regal fire swept over him, rippling up his arms to his shoulders, crawling up his neck and blazing full force into his eyes, sweeping inside him like a wind sucked through a cracked window.

His eyesight darkened to black, burnt away. Then suddenly it brightened to a haze of purple scenery and pinpoint-vivid color upon his target, Ardyn.

He had never felt pain like this. Ropes of it, crawling up his body. Two glowing gems of it, in his skull, as the Kings’ power took his sight from him. The sight of a tactician, of a strategist, of a man of _precision_. He remembered, somewhere in the back of his mind, a time when Noctis had told Prompto that Ignis didn’t need the glasses. He remembered scoffing, and offering an amendment: he didn’t _need_ them, but he preferred the crystalline clarity of wearing them.

Well. He supposed that wouldn’t matter anymore.

But he knew then, even in that moment as the Kings took his sight and burned his body: he would’ve done it a hundred times over if it meant saving Noctis.

Ignis channeled the power of the Kings and leapt backward from the altar to the courtyard approach. He faced Ardyn properly, curling his hands into fists and showing him the ring upon his left hand. He did not bear it as King Regis had, as Noctis one day would. He bore it on the wrong side, in the wrong way.

And for that arrogance, he had paid his price. He could _feel_ the damage to his eyes and to his face, where the Kings’ demand of sacrifice had burned across his flesh. The skin there already felt puckered and charred, and he almost thought he could smell the burnt skin. It probably looked a right _mess_ , really.

“Well,” Ardyn said, crossing the distance in a move so quick Ignis couldn’t have tracked it without the Kings’ momentarily borrowed sight. “They’ve shown you their favor after all.”

Ignis drew his daggers from Noctis’ power and remembered his prince, lying still, peaceful, almost as if he were sleeping, on the altar stones.

If that was the last thing he saw with his own eyes, well.

That wasn’t such a bad thing.


End file.
